Daniel Wu
Daniel Wu

My sister Gloria asked me to try modeling.

Daniel Wu
Daniel Wu

I graduated from university with a degree in architecture and then ended up doing a series of internships with different firms. And once I was in an office environment, I realized that at school what I was doing was 98 percent creative, 2 percent makework, but in the real world, it was the other way around.

Daniel Wu
Daniel Wu

In 'The Matrix,' you see the fight between Keanu Reeves and Lawrence Fishburne. It's an amazing fight. But I know that they've rehearsed it for months beforehand. Because in some of the moves you can see them anticipating blocks before they actually happen.

Daniel Wu
Daniel Wu

It was 'Shaolin Temple,' Jet Li's first movie. That was the movie that got me to want to learn martial arts. Then I became a huge Jet Li/Jackie Chan fan after that.

Daniel Wu
Daniel Wu

You've gotta understand camera angles, camera movement - a kick that may not be very powerful may look very powerful from a certain angle.

Daniel Wu
Daniel Wu

Part of the Hong Kong style is the fact that a lot of the performers can perform the moves, and we don't over-rehearse this stuff.

Daniel Wu
Daniel Wu

I definitely don't think I'm going to have a mid-life crisis.

Daniel Wu
Daniel Wu

Bruce Lee was the first star I idolized. Growing up as a Chinese American, there weren't many people like me on the big screen.

Daniel Wu
Daniel Wu

I came from doing Wushu and other martial arts, and then I got into movies, and I had to learn that as well - the language of martial arts movie fighting. It's a different thing; it's a different kind of logic.

Daniel Wu
Daniel Wu

For us as Asian-Americans, I think the bane of our existence is one stereotype - 'Sixteen Candles,' the Long Duk Dong character.

Daniel Wu
Daniel Wu

When I was a kid, I loved watching kung fu movies - in San Francisco, we had 'Kung Fu Theater' on TV on Saturdays, and they'd air old Shaw Brothers movies with English dubbing, things like that.

Daniel Wu
Daniel Wu

There's a huge interest in the Chinese market, and Hollywood has a huge interest in the Chinese market with films like 'Transformers' making more money over there than here.

Daniel Wu
Daniel Wu

For Cantonese - because there's no standardized pinyin system - I have to have someone read it to me, and then I rewrite the whole script in my own Cantonese pinyin.

Daniel Wu
Daniel Wu

I think filmmaking is a gamble anyway, right? You never know the results from the start.

Daniel Wu
Daniel Wu

To do eleven fights in four months is pretty crazy. In some shows that we do in Asia, there are three or four fights over a six-month period, so you have time to recover and gain your stamina.

Daniel Wu
Daniel Wu

I worked with Jackie Chan for a long time, and seeing how much pain he's in, I realized that that might not be a sustainable career for me. So I started to develop my career as a dramatic actor rather than as an action actor.

Daniel Wu
Daniel Wu

I was a hyperactive kid, and it took awhile for me to find the right teacher. My master was a Shaolin kung fu teacher, but he also taught tai chi, Chinese medicine, brush painting - he was adept at all facets of Chinese culture.

Daniel Wu
Daniel Wu

The two don't necessarily translate, especially if you're a prize fighter: you've fought all your life, you've fought all these fights, and now you're trying to do a movie. You see that happen a lot - a lot of professional fighters don't necessarily make it so well into the movie world.

Daniel Wu
Daniel Wu

I turned 40, got married, got a kid, and my mother passed away. I experienced life and death, with the enjoyment of creating life and the loss, within one year.

Daniel Wu
Daniel Wu

I miss the Bay Area - the kind of laid-back lifestyle. Because in Hong Kong, you're going, like, 90 miles an hour, which is fun when you're young.